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Background Information
Florence Nightingale has been described in the literature as a forerunner of NI specialists. She gathered, organized, processed and analyzed data and then wrote reports on the health of British soldiers in Crimea (Ozbolt, & Saba, 2008). In Canada, the role of the NI began in the mid-1980’s as many nurses assisted in the design and application of HIS in health care and nurses were appointed to be the “clinical-technical bridge” (Hebert, 1999 p. 10). Nurses were instrumental in implementing this system with their clinical knowledge.
Definition of Informatics
Informatics, defined as the science of information, evolved from German, French and Russian origins. In 1957, Karl Steinbach, a German pioneer in computer science, first coined the term “informatics” originating from “informatik,” meaning computer science (P, 2013) which concerns itself with the “application of computers to store and process information” (Fourman, p.1, 2002). While another author (Saba, 2001) states that it was first coined by the French computer scientist, Dreyfus in 1962 as “ informatique” .Walter Bauer translated the French term into English as “informatics” (Pramilaa, 2013). In 1966, Mikhailov advocated for the Russian term” informatika”, and the English term “informatics”, as the term for the study of the use of information technology in various communities (Fourman, 2002).
Definition of Nursing Informatics
Many disciplines began to incorporate the term informatics to indicate a specialty within the specific field of study such as, ‘medical informatics’ or ‘nursing informatics.’ While reviewing the literature, there is no widely accepted definition of nursing informatics as it is continually evolving as new information, technology and communication emerges, and also because nurses interpret, analyze and evaluate data in various ways. It is important, however, to have a consensus definition as it can guide nursing practice, education, administration and research and also help to establish competencies. It also is fundamental in shaping a speciality (Stagger, & Thompson, 2002).
First coined by Dr. Marion Ball (Hannah & Kennedy, 2010) and first described in 1980, by Scholes and Barber as:
“the application of computer technology to all fields of nursing-nursing services, nurse education, and nursing research” (as cited in Thede, 2012, p.73).
This definition highlights the use of computer in all domain of nursing practice.
Hannah (as cited in Stagger, & Thompson, 2002),...